Covers for swimming pools serve many functions. Those functions include inhibiting evaporation of water, inhibiting loss or concentration of solutes in the water, thermally insulating the water, facilitating solar gain, and protecting pools from contamination by debris and other contaminants. Flexible pool covers offer advantages that include relatively compact storage configuration. For instance, typical storage schemes include rolled storage means such as collecting a flexible pool cover onto a reel or roll at an end of the pool. Such rolled storage means enables facile removal of a flexible pool cover, and also provides a relatively compact arrangement for the pool cover when the cover is in a relatively compact storage configuration, wrapped around the reel.
Storing a flexible pool cover wrapped around a reel at an end or side of the pool presents a convenient position and orientation for subsequent deployment of the pool cover. Because pool covers are often deployed and removed every day, convenience and ease of storage and use are important considerations.
While flexible pool covers are adapted to facile removal and compact storage at a convenient location, deployment of flexible pool covers is more problematic. Deploying flexible pool covers on or above a surface of water in the pool can be relatively difficult and inefficient, particularly where deployment is conducted by a single user. For instance, one person typically deploys a flexible pool cover by grasping a leading edge of the cover at or near a corner, and drawing the cover partially across the pool by walking from one side or end of the pool to an opposite side or end. The cover is typically drawn only partially across the pool because the flexible nature of the pool cover allows an opposite corner at the leading edge of the cover to lag substantially behind the grasped corner. The opposite corner typically lags substantially behind as it is dragged across or slightly below the surface of the water, with pool cover material bunched, folded, or otherwise crumpled behind the lagging corner. Frequently, water flows or accumulates on top of the cover because the lagging corner, or a pool cover edge proximate the lagging corner, is slightly submerged.
The person deploying the flexible pool cover typically facilitates complete deployment of the cover by repeatedly repositioning the cover as the person works his or her way along an edge of the pool, and frequently back and forth at an edge of the pool, to straighten the bunched or folded pool cover. The person therefore eventually gets the flexible pool cover completely deployed, but the lagging corner phenomenon creates problems. One problem is that added time and effort are required to get the cover completely deployed. In addition, water tends to accumulate on top of the cover where it is ill-positioned because it can interfere with pool cover functions, including the pool cover functions enumerated above.
Problems described here are more pronounced with larger flexible pool covers and larger pools. For instance, dragging an 18 feet wide flexible pool cover across a water surface in an 18 ft by 36 foot or larger pool provides greater opportunity for a corner to lag substantially, for the flexible pool cover to become bunched or folded, and for water to flow onto the pool cover, than with a smaller pool. Conversely, a relatively narrow pool, such as a pool adapted to only a single person swimming laps that is 8 feet or less wide, is relatively easy to cover with a flexible pool cover without encountering the aforementioned problems. Thus a swimming pool with a surface area of less than 112 square feet (7 ft×16 ft) is typically less problematic to cover with a flexible pool cover.
Solutions to problems associated with deployment of flexible pool covers have been either relatively complex and expensive, or ineffective. For example, automated flexible swimming pool cover assemblies, as well as some manual assemblies, utilize tracks permanently installed above the surface of the water along opposite sides of the pool. During deployment, a leading edge of the pool cover is directly or indirectly coupled to the tracks and drawn along the tracks from one end of the pool to an opposite end. Such track-based assemblies involve relatively laborious installation and complex hardware that require substantial investment of resources. Moreover, swimming pool accessories such as ladders, which are permanently or semi-permanently installed at an edge of the pool, are complicated or difficult to accommodate with hardware and installation intensive automated pool cover deployment systems.
Substantial installation and removal expenses strongly discourage removing the track-based assemblies when a pool owner or user moves to a new home. Expense and permanence make installation of such track-based assemblies a capital property investment or expense. Simpler, less complex solutions to deployment covers typically offer little timesavings or are relatively ineffective at preventing water from becoming ill-positioned on top of a deployed flexible pool cover.